McCormick vows to follow ethics rules as wife takes top role at big tech company
The wife of U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, Dina Powell McCormick, was appointed Monday to a top post at Meta, the $1.6 trillion technology company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The move puts Powell McCormick, a longtime business executive and former Trump administration official, near the top of the org chart of a company with extensive business before Congress, but limited business before her husband’s committees. Powell McCormick, who immigrated to the U.S. from Egypt as a child, most recently held a top role at merchant bank BDT & MSD Partners, and before that, Goldman Sachs.
“As he has from day one, Senator McCormick will continue to comply with all U.S. Senate ethics rules and honorably and enthusiastically serve the great citizens of Pennsylvania,” McCormick spokeswoman Katy Montgomery said in a statement to the Centre Daily Times. The senator separately posted on his personal X account he was proud of his wife, who will become Meta’s president and vice chairman.
Senate ethics rules bar senators from knowingly using “his or her official position to introduce or aid the progress or passage of legislation” that would further their own or an immediate family member’s financial interests. Meta spent nearly $20 million lobbying the federal government in the first nine months of 2025, putting it at No. 7 among all lobby shops, according to OpenSecrets.
Powell McCormick served on Meta’s board from April to December 2025, according to federal filings. During that time, Meta lobbied on at least one bill before the Senate Banking Committee, on which her husband, Sen. McCormick, serves, according to federal lobbying disclosures. The bill, which would create a task force on payment scams, has not received a vote in the committee.
Meta is also deeply involved with issues Sen. McCormick has either sponsored or cosponsored bills on. A November bill written by McCormick, a champion of artificial intelligence infrastructure development, would create an assessment of cooling infrastructure used at AI data centers; Meta says it has 26 such centers in the U.S. A December bill cosponsored by McCormick would fund research into the societal impacts of social media.
Neither bill has received a vote in its respective committee, on which the senator does not serve. Meta has not filed federal lobbying disclosures for the last quarter of 2025, the deadline for which is Tuesday, Jan. 20.
In her new role at Meta, Powell McCormick will “guide the company’s overall strategy and execution,” according to a news release. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who media reports said Powell McCormick would report to directly, said in a post on Threads his new hire would “focus on partnering with governments and sovereigns to build, deploy, invest in, and finance Meta’s AI and infrastructure.”
Meta announced last week it would buy Pennsylvania nuclear energy to power a new data center in Ohio.
